With their natural flair for management, women are making their mark in start-ups. By team viva

Women have come a long way from being just homemakers. They’ve proved themselves beyond doubt in all spheres of life including the most complex start-up ecosystem. According to the latest case study, businesses founded by women deliver higher revenue — more than twice as much per dollar invested — than those founded by men. The number of women-led start-ups has gone up in recent years across various verticals such as e-commerce, health, water, automobile and more.

Women entrepreneurs are prospering and shining as role models for others. There are several of them who have emerged as successful leaders. Here’s looking at some of them.

Dr Vibha Tripathi, CEO and co-founder, Swajal

A social entrepreneur working in the water segment, her start-up focussed on “providing clean drinking water”. Dr Tripathi specialises on the R&D of thin film solar cells and has held a number of workshops and seminars in the field of renewable energy and guided many students on the same. Swajal machines, therefore, are solar powered, automated smart drinking water stations. She won IOT India Congress Startup Awards 2017 and Swajal Water was selected in Champions of Change — Transforming India through G2B partnership by NITI Aayog — 2017.

Neha Bagaria, founder and CEO, JobsForHer,

This Bangalore-based portal enables women who have been on a professional break to restart their career. Started in March 2015, JobsForHer’s vision is to reverse female brain-drain within the Indian workforce by facilitating various job opportunities to women in various job profiles, ranging from full-time, part-time, work-from-home, or freelance projects and also work with companies to offer returnee internships to women who wish to upgrade their skills prior to relaunching their career. The dynamic venture works on a freemium model, through which companies are welcome to post job openings for free on its platform and women can apply for them for free. It also offers various professional solutions to companies to help them promote their job profiles, and/or partner with JobsForHer to run recruitment drives, reskilling programs and returnee internship programs.

Purba Kalita, co-founder, Salebhai.com

An e-commerce marketplace that enables people to order a range of specialities directly from their hometowns and discover regional specialities from across India. Besides her primary responsibility of handling the company’s communication, content development and PR activity, Kalita also manages the business development team, helping them sift through hundreds of thousands of products to handpick one-of-a-kind offerings that best define a region’s special treats and its migrant communities’ needs.

Suchi Mukherjee, founder and CEO, LimeRoad

LimeRoad’s inception came to the former investment banker after the birth of her son Aadit, when she was on maternity leave. Flipping through the pages, she found a piece of jewellery she really wanted to touch and buy. She realised then there was no place where one could access the vast array of amazing products that were being made and shipped out of India. With the idea in place for a women’s online lifestyle platform, the challenge of turning entrepreneur with two young children had just started.

Meena Bindra, founder and CEO, Biba Apparels

Meena had seen the opportunity for women’s north Indian ethnic wear in the market and liked to dabble in good design.

“With both my sons away in school during the day, I took the plunge and started Biba,” reminisces Bindra, who is now 71.

Today, Biba has emerged as a market leader in the women’s ethnic wear market. Across India, north, south, east and west, women have come to accept Indian ethnic suits as their preferred mode of dressing, whether at work, leisure and celebrations.